Soy-candied cockles

Tim Anderson says, “​​Tsukudani is here in the pickle section, but is it a pickle? It isn’t soured by vinegar or fermentation, but it is preserved, and it occupies a similar sort of space as pickles in Japanese meals: as a strongly-flavoured side, or as something to enliven rice. But tsukudani (named for Tsukuda, the area of Tokyo in which its production began) is more like a jam – a salty, salty jam. Basically, this method of preservation involves boiling various ingredients, typically seaweeds and seafood, in a mixture of sugar, mirin, sake and soy sauce until everything reduces down to a syrupy, blackish mass of concentrated deliciousness. I made this cockle tsukudani for the first time a few years ago and served it to an actual cockle farmer in Essex. His assessment: ‘They taste like cockle liquorice.’ This was not intended as a compliment. But I don’t care – these are sweet, glistening jewels of intense, meaty shellfish flavour and I won’t hear a bad word about them. Just a little spoonful on a bowl of hot rice; I am in liquoricey cockle heaven!”